"Rhode Island has lost 107,000 residents to other states, or about one in 10 adults. The exodus cost the state and local governments more than $9 million a year in lost revenue, the study concludes.“The most significant driver of out-migration is the estate tax,” the report stated. It said most of the migrating wealthy are moving to Florida, which abolished its estate tax in 2004. Rhode Island’s estate tax averages about 0.06% and kicks in at $859,350 this year (it is pegged to inflation). That is a lower threshold than all but two other states."

stocks

May 24 2011, 02:02 PM

New York's future is fleeingFor one thing, according to a recent survey in Chief Executive, our state has the second-worst business climate in the country. (Only California ranks lower.) People go where the jobs are, so when a state repels businesses, it repels residents, too.

The problem is that the kind of work available shows that the city accommodates new immigrants much better than it supports middle-class aspirations. A recent report from the Drum Major Institute has the data: "The two fastest-growing industries in New York are also the lowest-paid. More than half of the city's employment growth over the past year has been in retail, hospitality and food services, all of which pay their workers less than half of the city's average wage."

The implications of Gotham's "hourglass economy" -- with all the action on the top and the bottom and not much in the middle -- are daunting.

In Forbes’ rankings of the fastest-growing job markets in the country, six Gulf cities made the top 50: Houston, Corpus Christi and Brownsville, in Texas; New Orleans; and Gulfport-Biloxi and Pascagoula, in Mississippi. In contrast, just one Pacific port, Anchorage, Alaska, and one small Atlantic port, Portsmouth, N.H., made the cut.

This reflects a long-term shift of money, power and jobs away from both the North Atlantic and the Pacific to the cities of the Gulf. The Port of Houston, for example, enjoyed a 28.1% jump in foreign trade this year, and trade at Louisiana’s main ports also reached records levels.

The energy-related economy produces high-wage jobs that range from geology and engineering to the muscle work on the oil rigs, which provide well above average wages for blue collar workers. Such growth is particularly critical to regions such as New Orleans, long dependent on generally lower-wage industries like hospitality and personal services. The energy business also will help accelerate the expansion of business services such as law, accounting, architecture and advertising.

The shift to the Gulf includes some rapid industrial expansion, particularly for energy intensive industries. Huge natural gas supplies are creating enormous opportunities for expanding petrochemical industries. The German firm Thyssen Krupp opened a new $5 billion steel mill last year, and Nucor Steel announced a large new facility to be built just outside New Orleans. Like energy production, these facilities tend to pay above-average wages for blue collar workers, which will likely raise living standards for a region that has lagged historically.

At the same time, demographic trends suggest these areas will continue to become more attractive to international commerce. Despite a legacy of hurricanes and floods, Houston, with over 5 million people, has emerged as among the fastest-growing large metropolitan regions in the country. The region’s population is expected to double in the next 20 years. Most of the economies its port serves — Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin — also have experienced rapid growth. Recoveries are in place in many other hurricane-devastated areas, including greater New Orleans.

"California, once a business friendly state, continues to conduct a war on its own economy,"

Buffeted by high taxes, strict regulations and uncertain state budgets, a growing number of California companies are seeking friendlier business environments outside of the Golden State.Companies are "disinvesting" in California at a rate five times greater than just two years ago, said Joseph Vranich, a business relocation expert based in Irvine. This includes leaving altogether, establishing divisions elsewhere or opting not to set up shop in California.

"There is a feeling that the state is not stable," Vranich said. "Sacramento can't get its act together...and that includes the governor, legislators and regulatory agencies that are running wild."The state has been ranked by Chief Executive magazine as the worst place to do business for seven years.

The Great Political MigrationMillions of people are, for good reason, abandoning big-government blue states for low-tax red ones.

Between 2009 and 2010 the five biggest losers in terms of “residents lost to other states” were all prominent redoubts of progressivism: California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and New Jersey. Meanwhile, the five biggest winners in the relocation sweepstakes are all commonly identified as red states in which Republicans generally dominate local politics: Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia. Expanding the review to a 10-year span, the biggest population gainers (in percentage terms) have been even more conservative than last year’s winners: Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and Texas, in that order.

The state's regulatory vigilantes have erected a labyrinth of rules that increasingly makes doing almost anything that might contribute to increased carbon emissions—manufacturing, conventional energy, home construction—extraordinarily onerous. Not surprisingly, the state has not gained middle-skilled jobs (those requiring two years of college or more) for a decade, while the nation boosted them by 5 percent and archrival Texas by a stunning 16 percent over the same time period.

What has happened to my adopted home state of over last decade is a tragedy, both for Californians and for America. For most of the past century, California has been "golden" not only in name but in every kind of superlative—a global leader in agriculture, energy, entertainment, technology, and most important of all, human aspiration.

In its modern origins California was paean to progress in the best sense of the word. In 1872, the second president of the University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, said science was "the mother of California." Today, California may worship at the altar of science, but increasingly in the most regressive, hysterical, and reactionary way.

California's dominant ruling class—consisting of public-employee unions, green jihadis, and Democratic machine politicians—has no real use for science as Gilman saw it: as a way to create prosperity for its citizens. Instead, the prevailing credo of the state has been how to do everything possible to return to its pre-settlement condition, with little regard for what that means to the average Californian.

The US indulges what is what is known as transfer pricing like other nations.

This is generating all profit in an overseas base and then reselling at cost or a loss at final point of sale.

So one can sell in the market at final point of sale and incur no tax and profit is in a tax haven.

Are you happy with that arrangement?

This is a great argument for a "consumption" tax or VAT or the like.

Forget income taxes. Allow as much income tax free as you wish and then tax purchasing.

Purchasing cannot be avoided and will be taxed. Saving or generating income is not taxed.

Sounds good to me.

Rogerdodger

Sep 7 2011, 11:18 AM

I love black or white, either or, lines of reasoning.I also love the ability to ignore reality and overlook examples of how utopian collectivism along with stateism always turns out.See Detroit in Ruins.Or check out East Berlin in it's commie heyday.

Realville is never taught in universities.As a professor friend recently e-mailed his students (and sent me a copy) that he doesn't like the real world and has managed to escape it by spending his life in academia.I'd always suspected that.He confirmed it.It must be a wonderful world, up there, above it all, pontificating.

stocks

Sep 7 2011, 01:51 PM

Rhode Island Pension System Collapsing

The only problem is that the state could never afford the beautiful utopia it was crafting, and so politicians and union leaders chose the path of systemic deceit. Taxpayers weren’t told what the bill for the system would be; public service workers weren’t told that the pension guarantees they’d been sold were worthless because taxpayers would not and could not foot the bill.

An economic crisis is nature’s revenge on those who make and those who accept false promises; it is a holocaust of lies when the dross is burned away and only what is real and true remains.

The Ponzi-scheme quality of the retirement system is becoming more and more obvious: current employees have to pay more and more into the system but instead of being set aside to pay their pensions, the money is going to current retirees.

A lot of people who believed Rhode Island’s lies will now be looking for part time work in what they were told would be a secure retirement. As far as I can tell the union leaders and politicians who concocted this disaster between them have no plans to suffer any cuts in their own pay or pension plans — and intend to go on “serving the public” without any accountability at all.

In Forbes’ rankings of the fastest-growing job markets in the country, six Gulf cities made the top 50: Houston, Corpus Christi and Brownsville, in Texas; New Orleans; and Gulfport-Biloxi and Pascagoula, in Mississippi. In contrast, just one Pacific port, Anchorage, Alaska, and one small Atlantic port, Portsmouth, N.H., made the cut.

Union Thugs & Containerization

About 500 longshoremen stormed the new $200 million terminal in Longview before sunrise Thursday, carrying baseball bats, smashing windows, damaging rail cars and dumping tons of grain from the cars, police and company officials said.

... one of the forgotten efficiencies bestowed by the containerization revolution after WWII in which sealed standardized steel boxes that could be carried by truck, rail, and ship became the norm. Containerization made it much harder for stevedores to steal some of the cargo. Theft had been a traditional perk of working on the docks. Wikipedia explains:

Improved cargo security is also an important benefit of containerization. The cargo is not visible to the casual viewer and thus is less likely to be stolen; the doors of the containers are usually sealed so that tampering is more evident. Some containers are fitted with electronic monitoring devices and can be remotely monitored for changes in air pressure, which happens when the doors are opened. This reduced the thefts that had long plagued the shipping industry.

BTW, the American engineer who invented the modern container, Keith W. Tantlinger, just died.

The smart money says the U.S. economy will splinter, with some states thriving, some states not, and all eyes are on California as the nightmare scenario.

The point of Meredith Whitney’s investigation, in her mind, was not to predict defaults in the municipal-bond market. It was to compare the states with one another so that they might be ranked. She wanted to get a sense of who in America was likely to play the role of the Greeks, and who the Germans. Of who was strong, and who weak. In the process she had, in effect, unearthed America’s scariest financial places.

“So what’s the scariest state?” I asked her.

She had to think for only about two seconds.

“California.”

But when you look below the surface, he adds, the system is actually very good at giving Californians what they want. “What all the polls show,” says Paul, “is that people want services and not to pay for them. And that’s exactly what they have now got.” As much as they claimed to despise their government, the citizens of California shared its defining trait: a need for debt.

David Crane, the former economic adviser—at that moment rapidly receding into the distance—could itemize the result: a long list of depressing government financial statistics. The pensions of state employees ate up twice as much of the budget when Schwarzenegger left office as they had when he arrived, for instance. The officially recognized gap between what the state would owe its workers and what it had on hand to pay them was roughly $105 billion, but that, thanks to accounting gimmicks, was probably only about half the real number. “This year the state will directly spend $32 billion on employee pay and benefits, up 65 percent over the past 10 years,” says Crane later.

“Compare that to state spending on higher education [down 5 percent], health and human services [up just 5 percent], and parks and recreation [flat], all crowded out in large part by fast-rising employment costs.” Crane is a lifelong Democrat with no particular hostility to government. But the more he looked into the details, the more shocking he found them to be. In 2010, for instance, the state spent $6 billion on fewer than 30,000 guards and other prison-system employees. A prison guard who started his career at the age of 45 could retire after five years with a pension that very nearly equaled his former salary.

The head parole psychiatrist for the California prison system was the state’s highest-paid public employee; in 2010 he’d made $838,706. The same fiscal year that the state spent $6 billion on prisons, it had invested just $4.7 billion in its higher education—that is, 33 campuses with 670,000 students. Over the past 30 years the state’s share of the budget for the University of California has fallen from 30 percent to 11 percent, and it is about to fall a lot more. In 1980 a Cal student paid $776 a year in tuition; in 2011 he pays $13,218. Everywhere you turn, the long-term future of the state is being sacrificed.

…as he talked about the bankrupting of Vallejo, I realized that I had heard this story before, or a private-sector version of it. The people who had power in the society, and were charged with saving it from itself, had instead bled the society to death. The problem with police officers and firefighters isn't a public-sector problem; it isn't a problem with government; it's a problem with the entire society. It's what happened on Wall Street in the run-up to the subprime crisis. It's a problem of people taking what they can, just because they can, without regard to the larger social consequences.

It's not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans. Alone in a dark room with a pile of money, Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom. They'd been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences. Afterward, the people on Wall Street would privately bemoan the low morals of the American people who walked away from their subprime loans, and the American people would express outrage at the Wall Street people who paid themselves a fortune to design the bad loans.

stocks

Oct 16 2011, 09:06 AM

Illinois: the Deadbeat stateOwes billions in unpaid bills

Drowning in deficits, Illinois has turned to a deliberate policy of not paying billions of dollars in bills for months at a time, creating a cycle of hardship and sacrifice for residents and businesses helping the state carry out some of the most important government tasks.

Once intended as a stop-gap, the months-long delay in paying bills has now become a regular part of the state's budget management, forcing businesses and charity groups to borrow money, cut jobs and services and take on personal debt. Getting paid can be such a confusing process that it requires begging the state for money and sometimes has more to do with knowing the right people than being next in line.

The U.S. industrial base has been on a powerful upswingIn 2011 American manufacturing continued to expand, while Germany, Japan and Brazil all weakened in this vital sector.

Our top ranked area, Houston, is one of only four regions that enjoyed net job growth in manufacturing in the past 10 years.

Cheap natural gas, for example, makes petrochemical production in America more competitive than anyone could have imagined a decade ago. Linkages with Mexico in terms of energy as well as autos has made Texas — which is also home to No. 4 ranked San Antonio and No. 15 ranked Dallas — the nation’s primary export super-power, with current shipment 15% to 20% above pre-crisis levels.

The resurgence of heavy metal should lead regions, and the federal government, to consider shifting their emphasis toward productive, skilled based training and away from a single-minded focus on the BA or graduate degree. Few regions suffer a shortage of art history or English graduates. This more practical emphasis is particularly critical for the Midwest, which is home to four of the ten highest-ranked industrial engineering schools in the nation.

The Statists who have never ran a business or hired anyone say that neither excessive Taxes nor Red Tape will discourage business.But what do they know except what they read in a book?

AccentCare is the latest in a string of California companies moving or expanding to other states.March 28, 2011Home healthcare provider AccentCare is moving its corporate headquarters from Irvine to Dallas, according to the owner of the property where AccentCare has signed a lease for 33,000 square feet of space. AccentCare is the latest in a string of California companies moving or expanding to other states. Irvine business relocation consultant Joe Vranich reported on 204 such moves in 2010 alone.

California tech company to move most of its business, 135 jobs to TexasDec. 13, 2011"It continues the momentum we have seen out of California, with companies looking for a less-costly business environment."The company's proposed average wage will be $75,000, Porter said, and most of its jobs are expected to be filled with local employees.“Then the other part of it was the cost of doing business in California. Highest tax rates in the nation. Until recently very expensive real estate. Tremendous regulation and really a broken legislature. Something that’s got a built-in structural deficit that’s not going to improve,” explained Mittelstaedt. “The reality is this is just a very difficult place to do business. It’s a very expensive place to do business.”

Folsom Company Moving To Texas, Citing California Costs, Red Tape Dec. 13, 2011It's official. Folsom-based company Waste Connections is moving out of California and headed to the state of Texas.“Then the other part of it was the cost of doing business in California. Highest tax rates in the nation. Until recently very expensive real estate. Tremendous regulation and really a broken legislature. Something that’s got a built-in structural deficit that’s not going to improve,” explained Mittelstaedt. “The reality is this is just a very difficult place to do business. It’s a very expensive place to do business.”

stocks

Dec 22 2011, 08:25 PM

QUOTE (stocks @ Sep 6 2011, 08:40 AM)

The Golden State Is Crumbling

The Vandals rule the Central Valley of CaliforniaWhile the elites make excuses, citizens cope with theft and destruction.

I am starting to feel as if I am living in a Vandal state, perhaps on the frontier near Carthage around a.d. 530, or in a beleaguered Rome in 455.

The city of Fresno is now under siege. Hundreds of street lights are out, their copper wire stripped away. In desperation, workers are now cementing the bases of all the poles — as if the original steel access doors were not necessary to service the wiring. How sad the synergy! Since darkness begets crime, the thieves achieve a twofer: The more copper they steal, the easier under cover of spreading night it is to steal more.

In short, all the stuff of civilization — municipal buildings, education, religion, transportation, recreation — seems under assault in the last year by the contemporary forces of barbarism.

There is indeed something of the Dark Ages about all this. In the vast rural expanse between the Sierras and the Coast Ranges, and from Sacramento to Bakersfield, our rural homes are like stray sheep outside the herd, without whatever protection is offered by the density of a town. When we leave for a trip or just go into town, the predators swarm.

Lost Angeles -- The City of Angels goes to hellIn the new century, Los Angeles has begun to fade, and it can’t blame its sorry condition on the recent recession.

Streets are potholed. Businesses and residents are fleeing. In virtually every category of urban success, from migration of educated workers to growth of airport travel, Los Angeles lags behind not only such fast-growth regions as Dallas, Houston, and Raleigh-Durham, but also historical rivals like New York.

Between 2001 and 2011, the number of jobs in the county contracted by 7.1 percent. -- the decline was particularly marked in manufacturing, with the hemorrhaging of more than 150,000 jobs since 1990; only New York has lost more industrial jobs over the past 20 years.

Why has Los Angeles lost its mojo? A big reason is a decline in the power and mettle of the city’s once-vibrant business community.

The “emperors” of LA are the leaders of the public sector. As business retreated, power in Los Angeles shifted toward the government and its workers. Back in 1990, 13 percent of employed Angelenos worked for the government; by 2008, that figure had jumped to 16 percent. Even after a deep recession, the public sector—both county and city—continues to pull in big payouts. Today, almost 18,000 county workers earn more than $100,000 annually. The city has followed a similar path, with its city council the highest-paid in the nation. In L.A., as in much of California, public employees’ pensions have risen at unsustainable rates.

The Latino-labor machine has two major priorities: expanding the power of labor unions, particularly in the public sphere; and self-perpetuation. Unsurprisingly, it cares little, and seems to understand less, about L.A.’s economic environment. An example is Mayor Villaraigosa himself, another former labor organizer, whom the machine elevated first to the city council and then to the mayoralty.

Drowning in deficits, Illinois has turned to a deliberate policy of not paying billions of dollars in bills for months at a time

"Our revenue growth is not enough to keep up with pensions and Medicaid. It creates a squeeze for everything else."

The tax hikers of 2011 hope you won't notice the carnage of 2012

Think back to 1/11/11, the night the General Assembly raised personal and corporate income taxes by 67 and 46 percent. That legislation didn't cut spending by one dime. Never forget the assurances, though, that these tax increases would pay the state's debts and prevent future budget deficits

the tax increases are stifling the economic growth that would boost those revenues. With their votes, they made Illinois an even higher-cost state for job creators.

The tax hikers trust that, in the 2012 election cycle, you won't notice that their assurances of 2011 have fallen flat.

In its modern origins California was paean to progress in the best sense of the word. In 1872, the second president of the University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, said science was "the mother of California." Today, California may worship at the altar of science, but increasingly in the most regressive, hysterical, and reactionary way.

California's dominant ruling class—consisting of public-employee unions, green jihadis, and Democratic machine politicians—has no real use for science as Gilman saw it: as a way to create prosperity for its citizens. Instead, the prevailing credo of the state has been how to do everything possible to return to its pre-settlement condition, with little regard for what that means to the average Californian.

CalPERS earns 1.1% on investments in 2011

It falls short of the 7.75% average that actuaries say CalPERS needs to meet obligations. Calendar-year results are just indicators — the public pension fund's fiscal year ends in June.

The nation's largest public pension fund, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, posted a 1.1% return on its investment portfolio in 2011, Chief Investment Officer Joseph Dear told his board.

GETTING OUT: 4,000+ Americans ditched their citizenship over taxes...Former Tax Payers Renounce U.S. CitizenshipRather than deal with the complexities of U.S. tax law, Americans living overseas are increasingly renouncing their citizenship in order to avoid paying their income taxes. According to National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson, approximately 4,000 people gave up their citizenship from fiscal year 2005 to FY 2010. Renunciations increased sharply within the past three years, from 146 in FY 2008 to 1,534 in FY 2010. And during the first two quarters of FY 2011 alone, 1,024 Americans ditched their citizenship. The advocate’s report cites two reasons for the renunciations. First, many taxpayers abroad say they are confused “by the complex legal and reporting requirements they face and are overwhelmed by the prospect of having to comply with them.” Second, others have accused the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of “bait and switch” tactics, telling Americans they can resolve their unpaid taxes under an “older voluntary disclosure programs with the promise of reduced penalties, only to find themselves subjected to steeper penalties.”

The list of people in favor of higher taxes and who pay extra taxes can't be found.

The list of people clamoring for higher taxes but who personally use elaborate schemes to pay fewer taxes grows daily.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

In the recent State of the Union speech at one point the President said that Buffet's secretary paid more taxes than Buffet who paid $6,938,744.Maybe he mis-spoke and meant to say a higher rate.But rather than just voluntarily paying more taxes, which Buffet calls for, he goes to court to pay less, and gets $23,000,000 from the IRS.

A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 Presidential office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. 457 aides pulled down more than $37 million last year

stocks

Feb 2 2012, 05:28 PM

QUOTE (stocks @ Sep 6 2011, 08:40 AM)

The Golden State Is Crumbling

California's dominant ruling class—consisting of public-employee unions, green jihadis, and Democratic machine politicians—has no real use for science as Gilman saw it: as a way to create prosperity for its citizens. Instead, the prevailing credo of the state has been how to do everything possible to return to its pre-settlement condition, with little regard for what that means to the average Californian.

You Thought The N. Dakota Oil Find Was Big? California’s is bigger.

The Monterey/Santos oil field in California is estimated to have four times the technically recoverable oil as the Bakken Oil Field in North Dakota.Harold Hamm (billionaire owner of Continental oil) believes that the San Joaquin Monterey California fields are the next big horizontal drilling play.

Comments:

“This will only work when horizontal drilling has advanced to where they can drill oil in California from Nevada.”

“Don’t get your hopes up we are talking CA here. The majority of our legislature believes that pumping oil from the ground is raping GAIA.”

Tax revenue plunges in UK after 50% rate implemented...50% tax rate 'failing to boost revenues’21 Feb 2012The amount of income tax paid fell sharply last month in the first formal indication that the new 50p higher rate is not raising the expected amount of revenue.The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period.

Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been “manoeuvring” by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.

The self-assessment returns from January, when most income tax is paid by the better-off, have been eagerly awaited by the Treasury and government ministers as they provide the first evidence of the success, or failure, of the 50p rate. It is the first year following the introduction of the 50% rate which had been expected to boost tax revenues from self-assessment by more than £1billion.

POLL: Vast majority say rich already pay fair share...The big majority opted for a lower tax bill when asked to choose specific rates; precisely 75 percent said the right level for top earners was 30 percent or below.The current rate for top earners is 35 percent. Only 4 percent thought it was appropriate to take 40 percent, which is approximately the level that the administration is seeking from January 2013 onward.The Hill poll also found that 73 percent of likely voters believe corporations should pay a lower rate than the current 35 percent.

Stanford professor Joe Nation, a former Democratic assemblyman, argued that “from Stockton to San Diego, government pension costs are crushing local governments.” The article explained: “Based on economic and finance standards used everywhere except in the public pension world, the top 24 independent pension systems are collectively $136 billion in debt and have only 54 cents for every dollar they owe. In nearly every municipality, employee pensions are being prioritized over libraries, parks, street maintenance, health care and public safety.”

Poor cities, such as Vallejo and Stockton, are going to face fiscal disaster first, but the problem is spreading across California, and there’s nothing much the unions can do once cities start running out of money.

This guy's a piece of work.He complains about the rich not paying enough in taxes then sues the government so HE won't have to pay???

QUOTE

Warren Buffet's NetJets in November sued the U.S., saying the federal government had wrongly imposed taxes, interest and penalties totaling more than $642.7 million. NetJets Inc., the private-plane company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), was countersued by the U.S. over $366 million in taxes and penalties.NetJets Aviation Inc. owes more than $302.1 million, and another unit, NetJets International, is liable for $52.9 million, the U.S. said. Executive Jet Management Inc. owes $10 million while NetJets Large Aircraft owes $1.19 million, the U.S. claimed.

PLEEZE!

stocks

Mar 12 2012, 06:36 PM

QUOTE (stocks @ Sep 6 2011, 08:40 AM)

The Golden State Is Crumbling

North Dakota vs California

Cultural leaders making headlines cursing the 1% have made it a virtue to force California taxpayers to help pay for electric cars purchased by millionaires.

It is a mathematical impossibility that California's "renewable" technologies will ever make economic sense in a world awash in oil and gas. This makes the results of all this malinvestment entirely predictable. As North Dakotans become rich pumping oil, Californians are going broke erecting a vast subsidy-dependent green infrastructure primed to collapse the moment the funny money runs dry.

This year's state budget will be $6 billion in the red, even after painful cuts in education, health care, and transportation. And despite the fact that 1 percent of the state's income earners already shoulder half the state's income tax bill - leading one third of California's high income residents to flee the state over the past several years - Governor Jerry Brown is plumping for a ballot initiative to jack up taxes on "the rich" even higher.

And the vaunted entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley? they are salivating over the free money being served up by Obama's energy department, using it to leverage up their bets on windmills, solar plants, and algae farms

New York's future is fleeingFor one thing, according to a recent survey in Chief Executive, our state has the second-worst business climate in the country. (Only California ranks lower.)

Deficits Push N.Y. Cities and Counties to Desperation

The reality is that from Long Island to Buffalo, New York cities and counties face severe and growing fiscal woes. The chief drivers of the crisis: sweetheart programs that are out of control: state pensions, Medicaid, and retiree health costs.

“Everybody was complicit in this tsunami, and now it’s landing, but not in Washington or Albany,” he said. “It’s in places like Yonkers, where the choice is between school kids and safe streets.”

Taxes Prompt More Americans to Renounce Citizenship Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman's lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That's a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It's also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined. But not everyone's motivations are as lofty as Superman's. Many say they parted ways with America for tax reasons. The United States is one of the only countries to tax its citizens on income earned while they're living abroad.Americans abroad can be punished for noncompliance even if they owed no income tax - and IRS data show that most of them don't owe money.

And across the pond a similar loss of citizens:Over five million British citizens have moved overseas. Four thousand more depart permanently each week."What's interesting is one of the highest proportions of people looking to leave are wealthy people living in London, and the highest proportion of wealthy people looking to leave are aged 25-34.

"It is people who are out there with a career in front of them, looking to go out and make money, do things and make their own impact in the world, not just people retiring to France or Spain for a place in the sun," he added."Our research suggests the number of wealthy people leaving the UK is set to increase in the next two years," he said.

"Clearly there's a growing minority that is worried about the outlook; infrastructure, crime, anti-social behaviour, tax, red tape and do believe that there are better options abroad."

Since Warren Buffet wants higher taxes but refuses to pay them, I guess this is the real Buffet Rule in action:98,000 federal employees owe $1 billion in back taxes..."A report by the Internal Revenue Service showed that in 2010, 98,000 federal employees owed a combined $1 billion in back taxes.Members and employees of the U.S. Senate alone owed over $2 million."

PAYING AXES = Tithing for Government Worshiping Believers

stocks

Apr 23 2012, 09:00 AM

QUOTE (stocks @ Mar 3 2012, 01:08 PM)

QUOTE (stocks @ Sep 6 2011, 08:40 AM)

The Golden State Is Crumbling

If Stockton Is Broke, Why Isn’t San Diego?

U-Haul Rates Confirm The Great California Exodus

U-Haul rates for one-way 26 foot truck rentals in May:

From Sacramento to Houston: $2,370From Houston to Sacramento: $1,007

From San Francisco to San Antonio: $2,214From San Antonio to San Francisco: $1,069

Dynamically-determined U-Haul rates reflect the differences in relative demand for one-way truck rentals between any two U.S. cities.

"Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak,"

"Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak,"

No "basically" about it, everyone on the West Coast (not just California), DOES OWN a piece of Facebook AND Google (and Apple and Microsoft and Amazon and Boeing for that matter), and HAVE NOT robbed banks (that's New York) BUT ARE rich parents who have raised Mary Jane and made movies quite lucratively since the 1960s and ARE ALWAYS ABLE to climb majestic mountains and surf sun up to sun down or just sit back and savor sea breezes.

The last time there was a "Great California Exodus" was in the 1980s when the population was 23 million. It is now 37 million.

Who was it here who once said: "I spent a year in North Dakota once. I think it was a Sunday"?

When my kids were young, one of them explained to his equally young cousin in the Midwest who was dying to leave her hometown that he'd probably stay in his hometown "because we live where everyone else wants to visit." His young cousin from Kansas? Grown up now, and graduated from college, she just moved to Seattle.

stocks

Apr 24 2012, 09:36 AM

QUOTE (stocks @ Mar 25 2012, 06:02 AM)

QUOTE (stocks @ Feb 25 2012, 01:59 PM)

QUOTE (stocks @ Oct 16 2011, 06:06 AM)

Illinois: the Deadbeat stateOwes billions in unpaid bills

Chicago Called Most Corrupt City In Nation

Weekend of violence claims 10 shooting victims across Chicago

Illinois ‘Treads Water’ as Unpaid Bills Top $9 Billion

llinois’s backlog of unpaid bills has risen to more than $9 billion because of pension costs and falling federal aid, leaving the state “essentially treading water,” Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka said.

Illinois is second only to California as the state with the lowest credit grade from Standard & Poor’s.

The U.S. industrial base has been on a powerful upswingIn 2011 American manufacturing continued to expand, while Germany, Japan and Brazil all weakened in this vital sector.

Our top ranked area, Houston, is one of only four regions that enjoyed net job growth in manufacturing in the past 10 years.

Cheap natural gas, for example, makes petrochemical production in America more competitive than anyone could have imagined a decade ago. Linkages with Mexico in terms of energy as well as autos has made Texas — which is also home to No. 4 ranked San Antonio and No. 15 ranked Dallas — the nation’s primary export super-power, with current shipment 15% to 20% above pre-crisis levels.

Phenomenal Gains in Manufacturing Productivity

Today's factory workers produce more output in an hour than workers in the 1940s produced in a day.

It's hard to overstate how much the efficiency gains achieved by U.S. manufacturing have contributed to the improvements in our standard of living by making manufactured goods more affordable over time. We should spend less time complaining about fewer workers in manufacturing, and more time celebrating the phenomenal gains in manufacturing worker productivity.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently offered a stark assessment of the threat to his state's future that is posed by mounting pension and retiree health-care bills for government workers. Unless Illinois enacts reform quickly, he said, the costs of these programs will force taxes so high that, "You won't recruit a business, you won't recruit a family to live here."

California has always been a magnet – a land that has attracted people from across the nation and the world. It's a place that was known for its entrepreneurial spirit and open culture. But it has been turned into a regulatory and tax nightmare, a place where those who already have money can live in their coastal palaces and enjoy the splendor of the landscapes, but where it's unnecessarily difficult to move one's way up the economic ladder

Green businesses have joined the exodus of California companies leaving the state or expanding only outside state borders.

“Everything is difficult to do in California.” CEO of Green Trail Energy Dennis Wingo said. “When you try to rent property, the different requirements, the unemployment compensation. We knew if we were going to expand we either had to hire a bunch of robots who wouldn’t cost workmans’ comp or move operations out of state.”

Considering that the two biggest IPOs of recent times have taken place in California, there must be something going on there that Mr. Santellli has missed, like maybe the smart young people are moving in while the dumb old guys are "high-tailing" out, like at least two of the few industries in which the USA still dominates the world market (entertainment and computing) are quite at home there, like the state leads all states in agricultural exports (nearly doubling the next highest state)...like it's GDP is 13 percent of the total US GDP which makes it the eight largest economy in the world. I could go on and on but this is just as stupid as Mr. Santelli is clueless to the fact it was the followers of Arthur Laffer (why that guy has not been tarred and feather on national television is beyond me) for the past 40 years that have created the fiscal mess in California and everywhere else.

Would Mr. Santelli celebrate if we offered California with all of its "problems" to China in exchange for canceling our debt and they took the deal IN A HEARTBEAT?

QUOTE (diogenes227 @ Apr 23 2012, 10:41 AM)

QUOTE (stocks @ Apr 23 2012, 07:00 AM)

QUOTE (stocks @ Mar 3 2012, 01:08 PM)

QUOTE (stocks @ Sep 6 2011, 08:40 AM)

The Golden State Is Crumbling

If Stockton Is Broke, Why Isn’t San Diego?

U-Haul Rates Confirm The Great California Exodus

"Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak,"

No "basically" about it, everyone on the West Coast (not just California), DOES OWN a piece of Facebook AND Google (and Apple and Microsoft and Amazon and Boeing for that matter), and HAVE NOT robbed banks (that's New York) BUT ARE rich parents who have raised Mary Jane and made movies quite lucratively since the 1960s and ARE ALWAYS ABLE to climb majestic mountains and surf sun up to sun down or just sit back and savor sea breezes.

The last time there was a "Great California Exodus" was in the 1980s when the population was 23 million. It is now 37 million.

Who was it here who once said: "I spent a year in North Dakota once. I think it was a Sunday"?

When my kids were young, one of them explained to his equally young cousin in the Midwest who was dying to leave her hometown that he'd probably stay in his hometown "because we live where everyone else wants to visit." His young cousin from Kansas? Grown up now, and graduated from college, she just moved to Seattle.

Rogerdodger

May 18 2012, 06:56 PM

Greece is nice too. And they don't understand the Laffer Curve or supply side economics either.

Look upon California and despair. Last weekend, Gov. Jerry Brown delivered the latest in a long line of bad news. Turns out the budget deficit is far worse than he claimed in January: What then looked like “just” $9 billion worth of red ink is now $16 billion. And tax revenues in April came $2 billion short of state projections.

The Golden State boasts the world’s ninth-largest economy — and an 11 percent unemployment rate.For all its natural beauty and vast resources, it now has the worst business climate in America.

Brown claims his new tax hike would rake in another $9 billion a year, with most of the money supposedly going to schools.However, most of the money, in fact, would go to teacher pensions. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System has a yawning unfunded liability of more than $60 billion.

diogenes227

May 29 2012, 12:17 PM

Another "capitalist" blames the government for his failure. The state didn't give him the subsidies he wanted.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: High-Taxing State Loses 3.4 Million Residents...New York State accounted for the biggest migration exodus of any state in the nation between 2000 and 2010, with 3.4 million residents leaving over that period, representing a loss of $45.6 billion in income.Where are they escaping to? The Tax Foundation found that more than 600,000 New York residents moved to Florida over the decade – opting perhaps for the Sunshine State’s more lenient tax system – taking nearly $20 billion in adjusted growth income with them.

UPDATE: Kerry's Yacht In RI - Still Owes MA Taxes...The wealthy Massachusetts resident was avoiding a six-figure sales tax bill by keeping the luxury yacht in Rhode Island, rather than Massachusetts.The stern of the Isabel now bears the name of its home port — Nantucket — but it’s barely even visible.

salsabob

May 30 2012, 07:58 AM

QUOTE (Rogerdodger @ May 30 2012, 12:33 AM)

Atlas Shrugged in real time:

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: High-Taxing State Loses 3.4 Million Residents...New York State accounted for the biggest migration exodus of any state in the nation between 2000 and 2010, with 3.4 million residents leaving over that period, representing a loss of $45.6 billion in income.Where are they escaping to? The Tax Foundation found that more than 600,000 New York residents moved to Florida over the decade – opting perhaps for the Sunshine State’s more lenient tax system – taking nearly $20 billion in adjusted growth income with them.

In the field of demographics focused on migration, New York is know as the "Golden Door State" -

It has a net population growth rate of 2.1% but that masks a high degree of turnover with the State being one of the primary destinations of immigrants to the US but having a large emigration to other US states. Immigrants to NY are highly varied in terms of education, economic class, but with an overriding similarity of being in their primary working years. On the other hand, those leaving the state have a primary common denominator of being of retirement age. Essentially, NY is a magnet for those wanting to make money and once accomplished, they tend to move to areas with attributes more attuned to retirement - weather, cost-of-living, taxes. Those retirees wanting to escape the rat race but remain vibrant and open-minded in the NY style tend to go to places like Florida to be with like-kind escapees. Those who prefer the opposite, go to places like Oklahoma where their going-to-seed will fit in well with the locals.

While this was aimed at explaining different conclusions about the risks of climate change, it is likely applicable as well to why people derive different conclusions about taxes or government purpose -

"Cultural cognition" is the term used to describe the process by which individuals' group values shape their perceptions of societal risks. It refers to the unconscious tendency of people to fit evidence of risk to positions that predominate in groups to which they belong.

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